--- title: Researchers Are Working on a New Rapid COVID-19 Immunity Test description: Glucose meters, which are widely available, could become new tools to test how much immunity people have to COVID-19. canonical: https://time.com/6207388/covid-19-immunity-test/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-08-19T15:38:58.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T14:38:35.984Z article:section: Health og:title: Researchers Are Working on a New Rapid COVID-19 Immunity Test og:description: Glucose meters, which are widely available, could help test how much immunity people have to COVID-19 og:url: https://time.com/6207388/covid-19-immunity-test/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt85b435215c73f25b/698a34c609208f22c0419785/GettyImages-1227513276.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2099 og:image:height: 1181 og:image:alt: covid-19-antibodies og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Researchers Are Working on a New Rapid COVID-19 Immunity Test twitter:description: Glucose meters, which are widely available, could help test how much immunity people have to COVID-19 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt85b435215c73f25b/698a34c609208f22c0419785/GettyImages-1227513276.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Researchers Are Working on a New Rapid COVID-19 Immunity Test > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 19, 2022 3:38 PM UTC  Illustration of antibodies (red and blue) responding to an infection with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (purple). The virus emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and causes a mild respiratory illness (covid-19) that can develop into pneumonia and be fatal in some cases. The coronaviruses take their name from their crown (corona) of surface proteins, which are used to attach and penetrate their host cells. Once inside the cells, the particles use the cells' machinery to make more copies of the virus. Antibodies bind to specific antigens, for instance viral proteins, marking them for destruction by other immune cells. Illustration of antibodies (red and blue) responding to an infection with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (purple). The virus emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and causes a mild respiratory illness (covid-19) that can develop into pneumonia and be fatal in some cases. The coronaviruses take their name from their crown (corona) of surface proteins, which are used to attach and penetrate their host cells. Once inside the cells, the particles use the cells' machinery to make more copies of the virus. Antibodies bind to specific antigens, for instance viral proteins, marking them for destruction by other immune cells. Science Photo Library—Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 19, 2022 3:38 PM UTC As SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve, knowing your immunity status—both from vaccines and from infections—will become increasingly important. COVID-19 antibodies are the best proxy for disease immunity. But they currently require a health care provider to order the test, which has to be performed at a pharmacy or doctor’s office. The sample is then sent to a lab to analyze—all of which takes time, making the process inconvenient and too burdensome for most people. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found a way to potentially make antibody testing much more accessible. They developed a method to use widely available and relatively inexpensive glucometers—small devices that read blood sugar levels from a finger prick—to detect SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. In a [paper](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.2c02537) published in June in the _Journal of the American Chemical Society_, the research team described how they developed a way to attach SARS-CoV-2 antibodies to sugar and then have the glucose reader measure those sugar levels, which reflect the antibody levels. “We can manipulate the contents of the test strip to see if we can better understand where that immunity is coming from, and how long it is lasting,” says Dr. Netz Arroyo, the paper’s senior author and assistant professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins. While antibodies don’t make up the entire human immune response to a virus, they are an important window into the protection people build. Antibodies are generally the first line of defense against a microbe, and once antibodies are generated, then other immune cells, including T cells, jump in to broaden and strengthen the response. Arroyo was inspired to develop the system after remembering a 2011 [paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/nchem.1092) he read as a graduate student in 2014 describing a similar system. As the pandemic unfolded in 2020, testing was slow and cumbersome, leaving public-health officials blind to how much virus was circulating and how much immunity people were developing. “The idea of using a glucometer immediately came to mind,” he says. Arroyo and other Johns Hopkins researchers got to work developing a protein that would stick to COVID-19 antibodies and could be placed on a test strip, then creating a way for a glucometer to read the test strip. In the first version, the group used blood samples, but ultimately, a finger prick of blood was sufficient for the test, Arroyo says. The researchers are exploring ways to make the test even more accessible by using other samples such as saliva or swabs of the mouth, which also contain antibodies. Another big advantage of the system is that it’s generalizable to any infectious agent; the scientists just need to change the target to which the sugar binds. “We wanted to innovate a way that would not only impact this pandemic but future epidemics or pandemics as well,” says Arroyo. That means the test can also be used to measure monkeypox antibodies and provide doctors with valuable information about how well the [vaccine, Jynneos](https://time.com/6179429/monkeypox-vaccine/), is working, Arroyo says. The vaccine was approved based on limited information on monkeypox in people—and it’s [now given in a different way](https://time.com/6204909/monkeypox-vaccine-fda-authorization-stretch-supply/) in order to stretch supply—so being able to easily track antibodies in vaccinated people will give scientists a better understanding of efficacy and how quickly people become protected. Information about SARS-CoV-2 immunity could become more important in coming months and years, as the world learns to live with COVID-19\. Understanding how long protection lasts after each infection or [booster dose](https://time.com/6192092/new-covid-19-booster-omicron/) will help health authorities provide better advice about how frequently shots should be given. Because the test can also be tweaked to detect different variants, health experts can also get a better handle on whether people’s protection from vaccines is effective against the most recently circulating variants. To detect the antibodies, the researchers’ system now requires three steps, each of which involves treating the blood to different reactions. But the researchers are working on ways to streamline the process to make it similar to the one-step process that the at-home COVID-19 tests use. The university’s office of technology ventures will license the test for companies interested in developing it further. “The goal is to better understand immunity to COVID-19 and other diseases,” says Arroyo. This type of test is a “powerful tool to monitor what is happening in our population, and can inform policy decisions.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6207388/covid-19-immunity-test/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6207388/covid-19-immunity-test/"},"headline":"Researchers Are Working on a New Rapid COVID-19 Immunity Test","datePublished":"2022-08-19T15:38:58.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T14:38:35.984Z","description":"Glucose meters, which are widely available, could help test how much immunity people have to COVID-19.","url":"https://time.com/6207388/covid-19-immunity-test/","keywords":["COVID-19","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt85b435215c73f25b/698a34c609208f22c0419785/GettyImages-1227513276.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt85b435215c73f25b/698a34c609208f22c0419785/GettyImages-1227513276.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"covid-19-antibodies","caption":"covid-19-antibodies","creditText":"Science Photo Library—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6207388/covid-19-immunity-test/","name":"Researchers Are Working on a New Rapid COVID-19 Immunity Test"}}]}] ```